First Dream of Rai

(shared by Alayah and Kenzo in the Te’kula village)

​​You are kneeling in the mountains, above a monastery, watching a massive dragon of shadow and fire fall. Your arm is so heavy, as the jade that has covered your hand now spreads, creeping past your elbow, inexorably heading for your shoulder and eventually the rest of your body. You do not know how much longer you have.

You can feel the reverberations of the death of this creature all around you - the land underneath your feet buckling and shifting, the snapping and twisting of far away portals closing, wards and glyphs that Cha’mutte had created fracturing.

As your view drifts higher and higher in the sky, you see Drankor far to the south, and watch as a ward of great complexity and power, a prison of Cha’mutte’s creation, that had been locking something away in the city, begins to unravel.

Your perspective shifts as you teleport to the center of Drankor. The buildings, the landscape around you is indistinct and hazy, almost insubstantial, as you focus your perception on the blazing power of the ley lines that run through the city. Superimposed over the magical energy of this place is a vision of the future, or maybe the past: a vast army in a grand plaza, shouting in unison. Crawling out of Cha’mutte’s prison is a withered creature, dry as dust, dressed in the Imperial regalia of Drankor over ancient burial wraps, points of bright light where their eyes should be. They reach out their hand, and the army begins to shift, turning to skeletons, still shouting in unison.

You reach out and shove down, and push the withered creature away, deep into the catacombs below the city, quickly weaving chains of magic to hold it here, the magical power held tight in your jade hand, feeling your body solidify into stone as you do. The skeletal army shatters and vanishes, and you relax and turn your attention to the long, thankless task of maintaining this prison for whatever evil was great enough that even Cha’mutte felt the need to lock it away.